once a welcome meeting ground to the 'mystics,' from Jung-Stilling down to Du Prel. Schopenhauer has also turned Kant's transcendental idealism to the support of mysticism as occasion has offered; but especially was Jung-Stilling an admirer of the Æsthetic, because he traced through its involved argumentation the direct influence of Swedenborg. The latter's ideas Kant calls "very sublime." (Metaphysik, Ed. Poelitz, p. 257; compare Du Prel, Kant's Vorlesungenüber Psychologie, 1889; comp. Riehl, Krit. I., 229).
"Swedenborg says: The Spiritual World is a very real
quiescent, as is the case with a man when he does not think from them; but still they are reproduced when it pleases the Lord. That such is the state of man after death, the sensual man cannot at all believe, because he does not comprehend it; for the sensual man cannot think otherwise than naturally, even about spiritual things.
"But still the difference between the life of man in the spiritual world and his life in the natural world, is great, as well with respect to the external senses and their affections, as with respect to the internal senses and their affections. Those who are in heaven perceive by the senses, that is, they see and hear, much more exquisitely, and also think more wisely, than when they were in the world; for they see from the light of heaven, which exceeds by many degrees the light of the world; and they hear by a spiritual atmosphere, which likewise by many degrees surpasses that of the earth. The difference of these external senses is as the difference between sunshine and the obscurity of a mist, in the world, and as the difference between the light at mid-day and the shade at evening; for the light of heaven, because it is divine truth, gives to the sight of the angels to perceive and distinguish things the most minute. Their external sight also corresponds to the internal sight, or to the understanding; for with angels one sight flows into the other, so that they act as one ; hence they have so great acuteness."—From "Heaven and Hell," Nos. 461, 462.
